CouncilPapers.

Before you start

Before creating a meeting, make sure the following are already in place:

• The committee exists in CouncilPapers
• The venue exists in CouncilPapers
• The meeting date falls within your council's current Council Cycle

If the meeting date falls outside the Council Cycle, the form will not save. Contact your CouncilPapers administrator if you need a new Council Cycle created.

Steps

1. Go to Meetings in the left-hand menu.

2. Click Add Meeting in the Shortcuts section of the left-hand menu, or navigate to the committee first and click Add New Meeting from the View Committee page. Using the committee button pre-selects the correct committee for you.

3. Complete the following fields:

   Field	Required	Notes
   Start Date	Yes	Enter the date and time of the meeting in the format shown, e.g. 22/06/2026, 19:30
   Committee	Yes	Select the committee this meeting belongs to
   Meeting Subtitle	No	A short description up to 255 characters, displayed alongside the meeting title
   Venue	Yes	Defaults to the committee's usual venue automatically when you select a committee. If you change the venue, a warning "Not the usual venue for this committee" is shown — this is informational only and the form will still save.
   Public Note about Meeting	No	Optional longer text visible on the public portal
   Private Note about Meeting	No	Optional internal note visible to staff and councillors only

4. Click Save. You will be taken to the View Meeting page.

After saving

The meeting is now created and will appear in the Meetings list. The next step is to build the agenda for this meeting.

If the committee has default agenda content configured, you can create the agenda from those defaults when you are ready. See Building an agenda.

If you see a Council Cycle error

If the Start Date field shows the error "Meetings must fall within a pre-existing Council Cycle for [council name]", the date you have entered falls outside the date range of your council's current Council Cycle.

This can happen when:

• The meeting is scheduled beyond the end of the current electoral cycle
• The date has been entered incorrectly

Check the date is correct. If the date is right and the error persists, a new Council Cycle may need to be created. Council Cycles can be managed under Council in the left-hand menu. See Council cycles for more detail on how cycles work and how to create a new one.

Adding your full year's schedule

Meetings must be created one at a time. If your council has agreed its full meeting schedule for the year, work through each meeting in turn, selecting the correct committee, date, time and venue for each one.